Food Bank hires new CEO

Among goals are to pay off mortgage, add freezer space.

Among goals are to pay off mortgage, add freezer space.

March 18, 2006|JOSEPH DITS Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- M. Dennis Brown is a man of charitable food, importing his skills with the cooked variety in Greenville, S.C., to the raw kind in 10 Michiana counties. Not as a chef. Rather, as the man in the gray suit Friday strolling through the crisp-cool warehouse at 701 S. Chapin St. for the Food Bank of Northern Indiana. Peanut butter, crackers and diapers are on either side of him, and three major goals go through his mind: Pay off the mortgage, find a freezer, fill the warehouse. On Monday he began as president and chief executive officer for the Food Bank, which supplies food to about 280 local charities for a small charge. He fills the role left when Bill Carnegie took the same job in January at a larger food bank in Arizona. Brown comes here, closer to his Chicago hometown, after nine years as director of the Meals on Wheels program in Greenville. It served residents in a county of about 400,000 people. He's proud of starting a program to send nurses into senior clients' homes to assess their medical conditions, check for food, see if they need transportation and make sure their prescriptions are filled and up-to-date. He helped to grow fund-raisers -- a charity ball went from yielding $16,000 to $140,000 and a golf tourney went from $75,000 to $300,000 in profits. "It took some time to do these things; it doesn't happen overnight," he said, moments after helping to pull names in an early-bird cash raffle Friday. This drawing was a teaser to a car-raffle fundraiser that evolved out of a house raffle the Food Bank had been tweaking for years. The Food Bank had been $60,000 in debt early last year, said Nick Dalton, vice president. But it ended the year by breaking even, thanks to a rush of holiday generosity, he said. Brown is setting a higher standard. He wants to pay off the $350,000 on the Food Bank's mortgage in one year. That, he said, would allow the agency to focus on using its dollars to pay for food. It might also help the Food Bank to buy a building in Michigan City where, for now, it rents space, he said. The agency's second major goal, he said, is to vastly expand its freezer space at the warehouse, which for now has a walk-in freezer that can store just half of a semi-trailer's load. The Food Bank rents five trailer loads of space in Benton Harbor, said Robert Wallin, who's in charge of distributing food to agencies. "We're sending trucks back and forth all the time," Wallin said, adding that the agency could save about $2,000 a year with a big freezer here. Maybe someone could donate one or several walk-in freezers, Brown suggested. Brown said the Food Bank's third big goal is to fill the 80-square-foot warehouse: "There's room to grow." He said he left the Meals on Wheels job in search of a new challenge. He was going to start a nonprofit consulting business, then the Food Bank offer came two weeks ago. He holds a master's degree in administration from Central Michigan University. He and his wife, Carolyn, also served as officers of the Salvation Army for 12 years in Illinois, Ohio, Kansas and Missouri. He said his wife is still helping people to gain their GEDs and prepare for work in Greenville -- until their house sells. "She's hoping to do the same thing up here," he said.Staff writer Joseph Dits: jdits@sbtinfo.com (574) 235-6158